[NUS Module Review] LSM2291: Fundamental Techniques in Microbiology
(INTRODUCTION)
Sometimes I truly am questioning myself as to why on earth am I still on the path towards taking a Life Science minor when I've already got more than enough on my Chemistry plate. But speaking of plates, you will enjoy seeing more plates in this module because all you deal with are essentially agar plates. So welcome to yet another lab module, but this time; the Life Science version of it. They say it's simple and every Life Science students' dream to take this module because its a free A. But are these dreams at the expense of my nightmare? Let's see shall we?
(LECTURERS)
The lecturers were A/P Kevin Tan and A/P John Chen. Hmm... I wonder where should I start? Since there were only 4 lectures in total throughout the entire semester, to be able to make a concrete conclusion of them is difficult. But, there are some things I can conclude about them, their teaching style and yada yada.
The first thing I can say about both of them is that they are friendly and knowledgeable. Comparatively, A/P Tan is better than A/P Chen in the "friendly factor". He would walk around and comment on our products, spot some cool stuff on our agar plate and really try to engage with us. A/P Chen on the other hand... doesn't do all these. But he's not that bad either as he did welcome people to ask him questions. Both are knowledgeable and they have a field of experience that I think most lecturers would want to have.
However, their teaching styles are night and day. While A/P Tan's lectures are lively and upbeat, A/P Chen's lectures are bone dry and frankly speaking, lullaby-like. He reads directly from the slides and chooses to throw every single information inside the slides of his, making the content heavier than it needed to be. So I guess you could say I prefer A/P Tan over A/P Chen.
But no disrespect to either of them, because I think they are considered to be two of the nicest lecturers that I've had in NUS so far.
The first thing I can say about both of them is that they are friendly and knowledgeable. Comparatively, A/P Tan is better than A/P Chen in the "friendly factor". He would walk around and comment on our products, spot some cool stuff on our agar plate and really try to engage with us. A/P Chen on the other hand... doesn't do all these. But he's not that bad either as he did welcome people to ask him questions. Both are knowledgeable and they have a field of experience that I think most lecturers would want to have.
However, their teaching styles are night and day. While A/P Tan's lectures are lively and upbeat, A/P Chen's lectures are bone dry and frankly speaking, lullaby-like. He reads directly from the slides and chooses to throw every single information inside the slides of his, making the content heavier than it needed to be. So I guess you could say I prefer A/P Tan over A/P Chen.
But no disrespect to either of them, because I think they are considered to be two of the nicest lecturers that I've had in NUS so far.
(EXPANSION OF TOPICS COVERED)
The lab topics covered include:
- Skin
- Food
- Water
- Soil
The lecture topics covered include:
- Comparing Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes
- Birth of Microbes and Identifying Them
- Types of Microbes
- Microbes Involved in Bodily Actions like Immune Systems
- Skin - Discover, identify and classify microbes on certain parts of the body like scalp, back of the ear, feet, hand and cheek. Give reasons as to which part of the body has the most microbes. Using different soaps, discover which soap best removes microbes on your hand. Lastly, discover how much microbes there are on your phone.
- Food - Comparing Yakult and Vitagen, determine the amount of microbes using two methods; Pour Plate and Miles and Misra. Prior to the determination of the number of microbes, the Yakult and Vitagen are placed in different temperatures at different duration. Classify these microbes and give reasons for the differences in number of microbes.
- Water - Using LES Endo agar and Lactose TTC agar, discover the type of microbes present in an unknown sample of water. Use GIMViC to aid in your discovery. Interpret your observations in the identification tests and make conclusions to the water tested.
- Soil - Using a known amount of soil, analyse the amount of bacteria, actinomycetes and fungi using different media like Sabouraud Agar, Yeast Malt Agar and Nutrient Agar. Characterize these organisms using classification methods like gram staining, lactophenol cotton blue and spread plating.
After doing the summary of what you'd be actually doing in the lab sessions, I think I do a better summary than the lecturers themselves. So if you were to take this module and get confused with the lab manuals they provide, I got you covered.
(PASSING THE ASSESSMENT)
The grading for the assessments in this module are as follows:
- Reports - 30%
- Midterms - 30%
- Final Written Exam and Practical - 20% x 2 = 40%
The reports are pretty easy to do, but you need to be able to cover all the pointers reviewed by your TAs during and after your lab session. Since the TAs are the one that will mark your reports, paying attention to what they say and writing everything they want to see will guarantee you a good mark.
For midterms, it will cover most of the lectures and experiments. If I wasn't wrong, the lecture notes pretty much dominated what was tested here. All I can say is that if you're a Life Science student, this should be a breeze for you. But if you're not, fear and be scared. Because the bell-curve will WRECK you. Why? Read on to find out.
And then comes the final written exam and practical. To be honest, I don't know what to make up for the written exam. Everything sounds super weird to me and possibly half the class. I'm not sure if it's because the lecturers wanted to kill us or what but it was just weird. Anyways, more experimental techniques than lecture notes will be tested in this final written exam. As for the practical, just be sure that streaking of the agar plate and gram staining will be tested. The rest of the experimental techniques that could be tested are subject to the mood of the testers.
For midterms, it will cover most of the lectures and experiments. If I wasn't wrong, the lecture notes pretty much dominated what was tested here. All I can say is that if you're a Life Science student, this should be a breeze for you. But if you're not, fear and be scared. Because the bell-curve will WRECK you. Why? Read on to find out.
And then comes the final written exam and practical. To be honest, I don't know what to make up for the written exam. Everything sounds super weird to me and possibly half the class. I'm not sure if it's because the lecturers wanted to kill us or what but it was just weird. Anyways, more experimental techniques than lecture notes will be tested in this final written exam. As for the practical, just be sure that streaking of the agar plate and gram staining will be tested. The rest of the experimental techniques that could be tested are subject to the mood of the testers.
(Schedule)
The schedule for this module is pretty straightforward. There are a total of 4 lectures (2 hours each) and 4 lab sessions (6 hours each) throughout the entire semester. And usually whenever there is a lecture, there will be lab right after it. There is no webcast for the lectures so you have to come for it, or don't, because most stuff are already in the lecture notes. On one of the week, the lecture slot will be used for midterms, while on other weeks, one of the lab slots will be used for the finals and a trip to a brewery. Yes, a beer trip where you will taste lotsa beer, but the entire field trip will be tested for your finals. So get drunk and get wasted, but don't get wasted during the finals alright!
(EXPERIENCE AND FINAL GRADING)
So I was really feeling optimistic for this module. Despite it being another lab module to my collectors list, I actually felt that I could do this. I've read reviews online on how this lab module is so simple that you can actually score here. And so here I am; a wandering Chemistry student in a sea of hungry Life Science students battling to get the A.
This module started off pretty well. A/P Tan got me interested in this module because of his lectures and I feel that maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Being a Monday lab and all, it actually sucks to be in this predicament when you could have taken other possible modules. But nope, I was all in for this... until I met my partner for this module.
While partners are usually a hit and miss, we are actually allowed to choose our own partners for this module. And since I do not know anyone from this module, I ended up partnering with a guy whom I actually have no idea who he is. And while I had a couple of lab partners during my time in NUS, this has just gotta be the worst one I've ever had. Sorry to say this, but I gotta be honest. Even though we were partners, he barely listens to my opinions on how to go about doing the experiment. He even doubts every single action of mine and man-manages all my actions. The list just goes on but I shall stop here because the other things that I could possibly say are worse than those mentioned. But despite all the secret displeasure between the both of us, we got the job done professionally and he needed me just as how I needed him so it's all good.
Okay, enough with the partner issue. It's not like our disagreements are going to cause our marks to be lower anyways. But it's good to have a partner you can work with and trust. One good thing I can say about my partner is that he prepared a word document before every lab to tabulate all the results and findings inside. This is something you might wanna do before your labs as well; to keep all your needed information in a concise manner. Then comes the midterms, and oh boy. For the first time this semester, I literally cried after receiving the results because I felt like I was really lost and helpless in this module. Out of the 33 MCQ questions tested, I had only 4 of them wrong and it got me a D+ for mid-terms. That's how bad it was. There was a sea of As, A+ and B+ and then there's me and another guy who got D+, and one other person who got a F. How they actually mark these MCQs, I have no idea, but as much as I could moan about it, or argue about the grading process, it was not gonna change anything. The bell-curve will wreck you. You need a near perfect score to even smell that A. Ugh.
So my only saving grace was my reports. The report deadlines are all manageable, though its best for you to start early rather than wait for the very last minute. And while they didn't release the grades for the reports, those that didn't do well were simply marked with an ink (Just write the damn grade gdi la so mafan), while those that did do well had no ink marks on it. Apparently they only came up with this just this semester because the reports were "not well done". Felt so weird when they would openly send the grades for the midterm for everyone to see, but when it came to the reports, they didn't? Nonetheless, all my reports had no ink marks so it was great I guess.
When it came to the finals, wow. That's all I can say. The written paper felt overwhelming. Don't get me wrong; I'm the type of person that will study everything in depth, but from minute one to the last minute of the written paper, I think all I could really say in my head was "WTF am I even writing???" Like I had no idea if my answers were correct or not. The questions they asked were questions like what would we expect if we gram stain this bacteria and why? Simple questions on the surface, but realistically it's not something you would be sure of the answer. Or at least, this was how I felt. The practical part was pretty doable; if you plan your time properly. I didn't apparently and ended out throwing my perfect gram stain plate that was supposed to be submitted into the bin out of a moment of panic. It's probably the best time to say; don't be like me.
**After receiving the results: It was surprisingly decent. Salvaged my D+ and how even? Maybe my reports and finals pulled my total score up. Maybe if I didn't throw away my perfect gram stain, my score would be higher. Hmm...**
This module started off pretty well. A/P Tan got me interested in this module because of his lectures and I feel that maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Being a Monday lab and all, it actually sucks to be in this predicament when you could have taken other possible modules. But nope, I was all in for this... until I met my partner for this module.
While partners are usually a hit and miss, we are actually allowed to choose our own partners for this module. And since I do not know anyone from this module, I ended up partnering with a guy whom I actually have no idea who he is. And while I had a couple of lab partners during my time in NUS, this has just gotta be the worst one I've ever had. Sorry to say this, but I gotta be honest. Even though we were partners, he barely listens to my opinions on how to go about doing the experiment. He even doubts every single action of mine and man-manages all my actions. The list just goes on but I shall stop here because the other things that I could possibly say are worse than those mentioned. But despite all the secret displeasure between the both of us, we got the job done professionally and he needed me just as how I needed him so it's all good.
Okay, enough with the partner issue. It's not like our disagreements are going to cause our marks to be lower anyways. But it's good to have a partner you can work with and trust. One good thing I can say about my partner is that he prepared a word document before every lab to tabulate all the results and findings inside. This is something you might wanna do before your labs as well; to keep all your needed information in a concise manner. Then comes the midterms, and oh boy. For the first time this semester, I literally cried after receiving the results because I felt like I was really lost and helpless in this module. Out of the 33 MCQ questions tested, I had only 4 of them wrong and it got me a D+ for mid-terms. That's how bad it was. There was a sea of As, A+ and B+ and then there's me and another guy who got D+, and one other person who got a F. How they actually mark these MCQs, I have no idea, but as much as I could moan about it, or argue about the grading process, it was not gonna change anything. The bell-curve will wreck you. You need a near perfect score to even smell that A. Ugh.
So my only saving grace was my reports. The report deadlines are all manageable, though its best for you to start early rather than wait for the very last minute. And while they didn't release the grades for the reports, those that didn't do well were simply marked with an ink (Just write the damn grade gdi la so mafan), while those that did do well had no ink marks on it. Apparently they only came up with this just this semester because the reports were "not well done". Felt so weird when they would openly send the grades for the midterm for everyone to see, but when it came to the reports, they didn't? Nonetheless, all my reports had no ink marks so it was great I guess.
When it came to the finals, wow. That's all I can say. The written paper felt overwhelming. Don't get me wrong; I'm the type of person that will study everything in depth, but from minute one to the last minute of the written paper, I think all I could really say in my head was "WTF am I even writing???" Like I had no idea if my answers were correct or not. The questions they asked were questions like what would we expect if we gram stain this bacteria and why? Simple questions on the surface, but realistically it's not something you would be sure of the answer. Or at least, this was how I felt. The practical part was pretty doable; if you plan your time properly. I didn't apparently and ended out throwing my perfect gram stain plate that was supposed to be submitted into the bin out of a moment of panic. It's probably the best time to say; don't be like me.
**After receiving the results: It was surprisingly decent. Salvaged my D+ and how even? Maybe my reports and finals pulled my total score up. Maybe if I didn't throw away my perfect gram stain, my score would be higher. Hmm...**
(CONCLUSION AND TIPS)
So that is that. I feel that too many times, the reviews of modules are given by students who are really strong in the field. So my perspective comes from a neutral point of view. Maybe I'm not used to the Life Science lecturer's way of teaching and that's why I find their lectures mostly lullaby-like. But honesty is still the best and I'm not gonna say something they are not. Surely a module that has very little workload, but to do well, you must be able to score near perfect for midterms, write half decent reports and just bang it during finals.
Ratings out of 5⭐:
- Should you take this module - If you're a Life Science student, I would highly recommend this module as you would be one of them to wreck the bell-curve. If you're minoring, this is also highly recommended. Though if you're like me; having another lab in addition to this, you might want to consider taking this.
- Degree of Difficulty - ⭐⭐
- Effort Required - ⭐⭐⭐
- Timetable Impact - ⭐⭐
**For more queries, kindly comment down below or follow/dm my Instagram (geraldgg__). Thanks**
Comments
Post a Comment
Feel free to share your views :)